


for you, one thousand paper cranes

by ohhotlamb



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Origami, Pining, takes place a few months after viktor arrives to japan to the end of the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 06:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10457244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhotlamb/pseuds/ohhotlamb
Summary: “There’s a…legend,” Yuuri admits, watching as Viktor struggles valiantly over his crane, “or story, I guess you could say, that once you’ve folded one thousand paper cranes you can make a wish, and then that wish will be granted to you by the gods.”There’s a brief pause, in which Viktor’s fingers still. He doesn’t look up from his hands. “Like a fairytale,” he muses, frowning.“Like a fairytale,” Yuuri nods.Viktor looks up then, and Yuuri casts his eyes down before he can be caught staring. “Do you believe in them? In fairytales?”“I don’t know. I guess…” Yuuri glances up, quickly, just enough to see Viktor watching him earnestly. His cheeks warm. “I guess it’s nice to believe.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphire_eyes27](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_eyes27/gifts).



> based entirely on a prompt by the lovely [rolling-blunder](https://rolling-blunder.tumblr.com/) (aka sapphire_eyes27) : "Imagine Yuuri being really good at origami (like that's a relaxing pastime for him) and Viktor has always wanted to learn how to make paper cranes and they make a thousand together and Yuuri tells Viktor to make a wish but Viktor says he already has everything he could ever wish for <3" 
> 
> i can't tell you how happy i am that you decided to share this with me, it was so fun to write! (sorry it took me 2 months lmao) i really hope this lives up to your beautiful idea! love youuuu!

“What’s that supposed to be?”

Yuuri doesn’t necessary _jump,_ but his elbow does slip a bit across the table, knocking into his glass of water and sloshing it around. Long, spindly fingers immediately wrap to steady it. Yuuri’s eyes trail up the arm those fingers belong to, pale skin covered with a thin sheen of sweat—the inn is old, and doesn’t have air conditioning. Yuuri himself has a cold towel (well, it’s not cold _anymore)_ covering the back of his neck.

But it must affect Viktor even more, as his body is more-or-less designed to withstand cold. Whether it’s the frigid winters that assault St. Petersburg or the year-round frost that is settled perpetually over the ice rink, that’s what he’s made for. Sure, the Russian port city had its fair share of muggy weather. But this—the dead of a Japanese summer, the humidity laying over the town like a blanket, the sea winds doing little to blow it away—seems to sap his energy. Coupled with the lack of air conditioning, he’s left sluggish and as dead in the eyes as codfish washed up on shore. 

Not now, though. Right now, his droopy eyes are brightened with interest, one hand having found its way to the small of Yuuri’s back as he peers over his shoulder. His hand is incredibly warm and, even though the thin layer of Yuuri’s shirt, damp. Distracting. He blinks, mouth falling open as he immediately forgets what was asked of him.

“Huh?”

Viktor pokes the scarlet paper on the table with his forefinger. “This. What is it?”

Ah, yes. Yuuri glances back down—this one had taken him fifteen minutes. It was the legs that had taken him so long. Sharp and angular, eight of them stemming from the heart-shape of the delicately folded body. It’s not bad for an improvisation, but there are creases in the paper where there shouldn’t be, the result of folding and re-folding too many times.

He looks away awkwardly, acutely aware of Viktor’s breathing _right there._ He’s _still_ not completely used to him—he doesn’t think he’ll ever really get to the point where his stomach doesn’t do that wretched _twisting_ thing whenever Viktor does, well, _anything_. But it’s already been several months of this, and at the very least he doesn’t feel faint at Viktor’s touch anymore.

He clears his throat, feeling the back of his neck heat up. “It’s supposed to be a crab.”

“Hmmm, I can see that,” Viktor hums. “What else can you make?”

_He can’t actually be interested in this, right?_

A quick peek tells him that, no, Viktor is quite serious—maybe it’s boredom ( the ice rink is closed today due to scheduled maintenance, after all) or maybe it’s pity or maybe it’s more of that “ _I want to know everything about you”_ persistence , something Viktor had been so adamant about since their first meeting.

“Uh, lots of things. Animals, insects, flowers, stars…” he trails off, a mental catalogue flipping through his mind—all of the years of imperfection that _should_ have granted him even _more_ frustration (because he _is_ a perfectionist, no matter how he tries to keep it at bay) but instead it had given him an outlet, something to sit and work mindlessly at for hours, until his fingertips were hyper-sensitized to the paper edges, until the shapes and colors blurred together in front of his eyes.

(He remembers, clear as day, shyly setting his first paper flower—a tulip—onto his mother’s lap, a gift for the one who had taught him how.)

“This is called origami, yes?”

A shaky breath, followed by a nod.  “It’s kind of a little hobby of mine. Just something I do to de-stress.”

Viktor’s head tilts to the side, blue eyes twinkling. “My, my. So much talent for one person.”

Yuuri just stares at him helplessly, because how is he supposed to respond to that? Was that meant to be a joke? It certainly seems that way, coming from someone who has talent and beauty and magic oozing from every pore.

“Show me how.”

Yuuri blinks, opening his mouth, then closing it. He tries again. “Right now?”

Viktor lets out a soft snort through his nose, shifting so that he sits beside Yuuri, legs crossed under the table. Their knees knock. The hand has left Yuuri’s back, though his nerve-endings still sing their song of praise.

“Of course. It is time for you to become the coach. Teach me what you know.”

A part of Yuuri wants to tell Viktor that a lot of the reason he needs to de-stress right now is _because_ of Viktor. Because of that hand on his back, because of the constant _proximity._ It’s not as though he dislikes it. In fact, most of the time his touch is welcome (because honestly, he would be crazy to think otherwise.) It’s just that sometimes, like now, like today, it’s distracting. It clutters up his already-cluttered head, piling unwanted feelings and yearnings where they have no place being.

“Um…I’ve been doing this since I was like, five. It would take a really long time to teach you everything I know.”

He thinks about their morning workout during the marginally cooler early hours—running side-by-side along the bayfront, sweat trickling in a steady stream from Viktor’s forehead, behind his ears, down his neck, darkening the collar of his shirt. Viktor all but kneeling on Yuuri’s feet, coaching him through sit-ups; his face being _so close_ each time Yuuri dragged his body upward. It had been too much, too overwhelming, and so once they returned to the inn he had escaped—to bathe, to hide in the kitchen with Mari, and then, finally, to fold paper alone in the sitting room.

Why couldn’t Viktor see that? Why couldn’t he allow Yuuri one afternoon of solitude, if only to collect his scattered thoughts?

“Yuuri, please. Just one shape. I just want to learn one.”

Yuuri doesn’t have the defenses to deny this man anything.

“Did you have anything in mind?”

He nearly bites his lip, quietly chastising himself for being too eager.

“The crane,” Viktor says immediately, reaching for one of the thin squares of paper that lies in the middle of the table. It’s a light, fresh purple. “A paper crane. It’s famous, isn’t it?”

It was the first intermediate figure Yuuri had learned, and at this point he’s fairly certain he could fold one in his sleep. He nods, reaching for his own piece. This one is soft pink, like the color of the cherry blossoms. “I guess it _is_ pretty well known. Not very difficult for a beginner, either.”

Viktor smiles, teeth white as fresh snow. “I’m your humble student, Yuuri. Your word is my gospel.”

Yuuri swallows, eyelids fluttering closed for a brief moment ( _How? How can he say things like that with a straight face?)_ before he opens them and takes a deep breath.

“First, fold it in half both ways. So that it becomes four squares. And then do the same thing, but diagonally.”

He demonstrates slowly, glancing up from his own fingers as Viktor immediately follows his direction.

“Alright, easy enough start,” he hums, with a satisfied nod.

“From here on out it’s a little trickier, so we’ll go slow.”

It’s purely muscle memory at this point. It’s going through the motions, each fold crisp and easy. He barely needs to look at his hands—his fingertips feel where they must go, where those edges are. Instead, he watches Viktor’s. Hands that are normally so elegant, so long and confident, reduced to clumsiness, fumbling with a frustrated crease between his brows.

(Yuuri had needed a break from Viktor, but even when he has to opportunity to look away he can’t take it. He just can’t, and he doesn’t foresee a future in which he will.)

They’re folding kites into diamonds, diamonds into bodies and wings, a single tug at the end creating the elegant neck and face. They make the cranes, and it’s the longest it’s taken Yuuri to make one in more than a decade. But by the time he looks down he has a perfectly pink bird sitting before him on the table, and beside his own is one made of soft lavender. The difference between the skill of the craftsmen is clear, but both have their own sort of charm. In a nostalgic fit of reverence, he becomes overwhelmed with the desire to steal this lilac crane away from its maker, to hide it away somewhere in his room where it waits for his eyes alone.

(But why would he need to do that, when the maker sits right beside him, so close Yuuri can smell the sweat that dampens his clothes?)

Viktor leans back, eyes sparkling. “I did it!”

Yuuri nods, twisting his thieving fingers under the table. “It’s very good for a first try.”

Viktor pouts. “That’s just another way of saying it’s terrible.”

“You don’t have to be perfect at everything right away. Just keep practicing.”

“If you can resist your mother’s cooking for the sake of your training,” Viktor muses, moving his first try off to the side, “Then I can make a perfect paper crane.”

Yuuri has no doubt that he will be a master in no time, but he keeps this to himself. Instead, he stands, ignoring Viktor’s quizzical look as he moves to the opposite side of the table, with the excuse of giving themselves more elbow room.

Viktor reaches, taking another square leaflet for himself. He moves Yuuri’s bird off to the side as well, next to his own. Their wingtips touch. “I’m going to keep practicing. You can continue making your crabs.”

Yuuri reaches for his own paper. “I don’t mind making the cranes with you. It might help if you can see what I’m doing a few more times.”

He had hoped that the concentration would keep Viktor properly occupied, but he has no such luck. It’s like this during their workouts, too—even when he’s gasping for breath, Viktor can’t help but _talk._ Most of the time they are questions about Yuuri. His childhood, his family, his skating. Sometimes it is about Japan as a whole. The culture, the food, the history. The folding of origami has sparked his interest—he wants to know everything that Yuuri can possibly share with him.

And so Yuuri indulges him, with what little he knows. That origami is basically as old as paper itself, and how it came to Japan with Buddhist monks. He talks about the ceremonial Shinto uses of origami butterflies, and the folklore that comes hand-in-hand with an art that became culturally significant as the centuries passed.

“There’s a…legend,” Yuuri admits, watching as Viktor struggles valiantly over his crane, “or story, I guess you could say, that once you’ve folded one thousand paper cranes you can make a wish, and then that wish will be granted to you by the gods.”

There’s a brief pause, in which Viktor’s fingers still. He doesn’t look up from his hands. “Like a fairytale,” he muses, frowning.

“Like a fairytale,” Yuuri nods.

Viktor looks up then, and Yuuri casts his eyes down before he can be caught staring. “Do you believe in them? In fairytales?”

“I don’t know. I guess…” Yuuri glances up, quickly, just enough to see Viktor watching him earnestly. His cheeks warm. “I guess it’s nice to believe.”

Viktor studies him for another moment before smiling.

“I suppose it is.”

 

* * *

 

 

He feels absolutely hideous.

A potent mixture of nausea and adrenaline has him curled up on his bed in a fetal position, _knowing_ that he’s not going to be getting a wink of sleep tonight. Which is a problem, as the Southern Regional Championships are tomorrow and he really can’t afford to be any loopier than he tends to be on a competition day. He whimpers, rolling onto his side to flick on the bedside table lamp—he thinks Mari might have some old-fashioned calming teas in the kitchen, and while those of course can’t promise him anything but a bathroom trip later on, it’d be worth a shot if he could just be sedated for an _hour_ —

“Yuuri, why are you still awake?”

Great, just _great._ Just his luck that Viktor would be meandering the hallways in the middle of the night, his abnormally snoopy nose making its way all the way to Yuuri’s room. Maybe if he stays quiet, he can pretend he just fell asleep with the light on—

And then his stomach twists, and he whimpers again, pinching his eyes tight shut as bile burns the back of his throat.

There’s a light knock at his door, and he turns his face towards the wall.

“Yuuri? Yuuri, do you need Makkachin?” Viktor’s voice is soft, and Yuuri has to force himself not to interpret it as pity. “What can I get you to make it better?”

He’s shaking his head even though it can’t be seen, and he covers his mouth with his hand, wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Nothing, there’s nothing you can do, it’s always like this—“

“What about the paper?”

“What?”

“Your art. Your paper folding. The cranes.”

Yuuri pauses. Wets his lips.

“Bring them.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s three thirty-two AM, and he’s going to need to be up by six for them to make the train out. He has Viktor Nikiforov sitting criss-cross-applesauce on his bed, with a basket full of loose paper squares and a shoebox lined with little paper birds between them. Makkachin lies beside him, her sides expanding as she breathes, brushing Yuuri’s thigh each time. As he folds, Yuuri counts those breaths. A corner folded in. One hundred and seventy-two. The wing, the beak. Two-hundred and fifty-seven, two-hundred and fifty-nine. Makkachin is chasing something in her dream, and her paws twitch, little whispers of a bark every now and then. She sounds happy, so Yuuri doesn’t wake her up. Neither does Viktor.

The two of them don’t speak, and for once Viktor doesn’t fill the silence with interrogation. He folds, quietly, seriously, squinting every now and then with his tongue poking out as he thinks. He makes one crane in the time Yuuri makes eight. This is the way the anxiety melts, because it is impossible to think of anything else when he can think of nothing but these birds, nothing but the dark navy Viktor’s eyes become in this light, the fall of his hair a wash of silver.

It’s four twenty-one AM, and Yuuri’s eyelids droop. He sways. The basket of paper is gently put onto his desk, and the lid is put on the shoebox. Hands push at his shoulders, and he buries his face into the thick fur around Makkachin’s ruff. He sighs, and the fingers of a ghost trail down his cheek.

“You will be magnificent, I am certain of it.” And then, so quietly that it must be a dream, “One-hundred and eighty-eight.”

 

* * *

 

 

It becomes a routine, an unsaid agreement between them.

In the month leading up to the beginning of the Grand Prix series, at least one night of the week Yuuri finds himself in a panic. It doesn’t matter that he’s done this all before—it doesn’t matter that he’s had to prepare himself for grander stages. He’s made peace with the fact that the anxiety is just a part of who he is, and he had been resigned to deal with it alone.

It’s just one more thing about Viktor that has surprised him.

Right when it seems like it’s too much, when his muscles ache with a vicious sting and he can feel the pressure mount behind his eyes, when the ice is starting to look less like home, he can be sure that Viktor will be there with the shoebox and a basket of paper. And as he folds the paper with Viktor, he finds himself grow calm. He finds his heart become steady, contented. Viktor’s presence goes from something overwhelming into something else entirely—he becomes the comfort and the ease. He goes from ‘too much’ to ‘not enough’.

(There is a name for this feeling, and Yuuri knows the word. It is only a matter of deciding when to use it.)

His short program for the Cup of China had gone well. _Better_ than well—he’d broken one-hundred points, and shattered his own personal record. It had been a happy (exhilarating, incredible) day. He had breezed through the evening on a cloud, too far off the ground to be touched.

It had been because of his determination—to show the world, to prove that this feeling he has is justified. That he’s justified in wanting to keep Viktor by his side. That he’s _deserving._ It had kept his chest hot and his concentration laser-focused; he almost hadn’t felt like himself (he had felt like some better, improved version, in a universe where nerves couldn’t touch him, a world in which Viktor peppered his face with gentle kisses and cooed sweet-nothings in his ear.)

But that isn’t his reality. His reality is when the pressure finally catches up to him, and he arrives to the rink the next morning with a raccoon’s paint around his eyes. His reality is being pinned to the hotel bed by a subtly furious Viktor, _demanding_ that he nap until that evening’s events.

But it’s hard to nap when Viktor is literally sitting on him, the sound of rustling paper and the feeling of folded corners brushing his forehead as they are, apparently, lined up there. The reason he isn’t entirely sure of this is that he’s been blindfolded, and it takes a whole lot of effort to keep his mind from treading dangerous waters.

“You should have told me you couldn’t sleep. You should have come to my room,” Viktor mumbles, bitterly. Yuuri knows that he should be sleeping, so he doesn’t reply.  A crane is sat on the tip of his nose. “I could have helped.”

“You help me enough,” Yuuri blurts, so suddenly that the little army across his face tumbles to the side. He feels Viktor still, on his stomach. “I can never repay you for how much you’ve helped me. You do enough.”

“When am I going to get through this stubborn head of yours?” Viktor murmurs. “I’m a selfish man, Yuuri. Don’t forget that.”

“I don’t know what that means!”

“It means,” Viktor says, lying one more butterfly-light crane on the delicate perch of Yuuri’s bottom lip, “here’s one more, for good luck. Though of course you don’t need to rely on _luck,_ my star pupil.”

He removes himself from Yuuri’s stomach then, scooping his handiwork from the canvas of Yuuri’s body, presumably to keep safe in the shoebox. “Nine-hundred,” he says, and Yuuri continues fighting a losing battle, especially once Viktor crawls between the sheets to join him in bed.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been weeks, but his lips still tingle with residual fireworks. There’s a permanent image burned into the back of his eyelids, of that split second before Viktor’s face became too close to see properly—of his eyes slipping shut, his expression melted into something helplessly desperate. The second before Yuuri had first been kissed, though that doesn’t seem like a strong enough word for what he’d experienced. It was the beginning of a new chapter of his life. The beginning of this journey, this adventure with Viktor by his side. His thumb runs over the gold band on his finger, a testament to that beginning, and that promise.

Yuuri tucks his blanket tighter around his shoulders, looks up and out the window—at that lovely view of the Neva Bay, the water gray on this overcast, bone-chilling day in St. Petersburg. The apartment here is sleek, modern in a manner that Yuuri isn’t accustomed to. It’s clear that this space had never truly been _lived_ in. When they arrived, it had been too clean, too sterile. But Yuuri is slowly working on changing that—adding photos to the fridge and the walls, potted plants along the windowsills, his jackets on the backs of the chairs and couch. He works to make this apartment into their _home,_ to mix his belongings and his existence with Viktor’s, until there’s no shadow of a doubt that their lives are irreversibly intertwined.

Viktor approaches him to where he’s curled up on the window seat, two mugs of hot tea in his hands. He passes one off to Yuuri, and he settles in across from him, his eyes startlingly blue in the natural light of the window. He smiles, and Yuuri’s breath catches in his throat.  “Something to warm your fingers with.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri brings the mug to his mouth, letting the steam warm his nose. The apartment is pleasant in comparison to outside, but by no means is it toasty. “When it’s cold like this, I never want to do anything,” he admits, taking a sip—chamomile, warming him all the way to his bones. He sighs, happily.

“I don’t think it’s too bad,” Viktor replies, looking out the frosted glass. “I’m going to take Makkachin on a walk in a little while. She loves to play in the snow, which is odd as she hates getting wet.” He smiles at Yuuri, hopeful. “Join me?”

The thought of leaving his blanket nest on the window bench is disagreeable, but the idea of letting Viktor walk around by himself is even worse. He nods, reluctantly. “I guess so.”

“Ah, that’s wonderful! Thank you, my darling.”

Yuuri blushes, because while he may be engaged, he’s still himself. He still blushes, still stutters. Still gets starstruck, but not in the way he used to. It took him twenty-three years, but he’s finally seeing Viktor as a _person_ instead of an ideal. He’s still a heartthrob, but Yuuri has found that he’s even _more_ charming after a long night of rolling around their bed, hair sticking every which-way and eyes far away and dreamy.

“You know what we haven’t done in a while?” Viktor asks suddenly, taking a sip from his own drink. He’s wrapped in a soft-looking gray turtleneck, one that Yuuri briefly entertains the idea of pulling off and throwing across the room. Instead, he shakes his head, grateful that his hands are full and unable to misbehave.

“We haven’t folded any cranes.”

When Yuuri thinks about it, he supposes that it’s true. It’s been several weeks since the end of the Grand Prix series, and while moving to Russia had been stressful, ultimately it was a very happy period of his life. He hasn’t been anxious, so there had been no need for the origami to calm his nerves.  

“We can fold some right now, if you want.”

It’s the right thing to say, because Viktor’s smile becomes luminous, on the cusp of utterly blinding. The two of them move to the kitchen to more easily work on a flat surface, and Viktor brings the supplies from the bedroom.

(This time, when Viktor sets a hand on the small of Yuuri’s back, it’s not a distraction that Yuuri wants to run away from. )

The radio is turned on and they work to the sound of old-time jazz, and they talk in the way that’s become so familiar after all these months. Their conversations have gone from one-sided interrogation and skittish replies to easy banter, casual inquiries about each other’s days and their plans for the next. As they talk, Yuuri notes how much Viktor has improved. It’s impossible now to tell who has made which crane—Viktor is still slow, but his cranes are impeccable. Just as Yuuri knew they would be. 

Some time passes, and there comes a moment in which Viktor grows very quiet, his eyes growing very large, and he sets a  perfect green crane down on the countertop in front of him. He sits, silently, for a moment. When he looks up, his eyes are still wide. “There’s one thousand.”

It takes a second for Yuuri to understand, but when he does he makes a soft sound of understanding. He peers into the shoebox; so many colors, the cranes differing drastically in quality. It’s easy to tell which of them had been one of Viktor’s prototypes, or which had been folded on knees instead of tables, the only available surface when they worked on bedspreads and during train rides. There definitely _looks_ like there could be a thousand, though it’s impossible to say for certain without picking them out one by one.

“Yeah, there sure are a lot of them.” 

Viktor shakes his head. “No, my love. There are exactly one thousand paper cranes here in front of us.”

Yuuri’s eyes widen. “You mean…”

“I’ve been counting.”

When Yuuri just stares at him, he smiles.

“I had this grand idea in my head,” he says, one finger stroking gently along the back crease of his crane, “that once we made one thousand cranes together, I would make a wish. And I would tell you my wish, and I had been praying that yours would be the same.”

When Yuuri blinks, he sees that after-image again. The delight in that smile, the fondness in those eyes. But there have been plenty of kisses since then, plenty of love and endless affection. It’s impossible now to tell which smile belongs to which; to differentiate between the fondness _then_ and the complete devotion of _now._

And when he opens his eyes, he sees the same expression worn by the man in front of him. The same admiration, and pride, and love. He wets his lips, heart beating out of rhythm. “What was it?”

_What did you wish for?_

“It’s not important anymore,” Viktor breathes, leaning forward and gently nudging the box to the side. The bridge of his nose bumps against Yuuri’s, and when he speaks Yuuri can feel the paper-soft brush of his lips. He closes his eyes, leaning into that warmth, his lips parting as Viktor smiles against them. “Because I already have everything I could ever wish for.”

**Author's Note:**

> i miss them :'( 
> 
> also if anyone actually folds origami and sees anything like !!! ERROR!! ERROR!!! then you can let me know, i watched youtube videos but it's very hard to describe things in writing lmao sorry bout that
> 
> ohhotlamb.tumblr.com


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